AUTHOR
Larsson, Johan; Martinkauppi, Matti

DATE
2004-05-17

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
The purpose of this thesis was to gain a better understanding of how organizations try to understand and implement customer needs and preferences when developing new products. This thesis describes and tries to explain how can the product development process in a company be described? How can the influence of market research on the product development process in a company be described? How can the influence of internal dialogue between different departments involved in the product development process in a company be described? A case study of two companies was made in order to draw conclusions on the research. Our main finding was that the product development process in different organizations has similar features supported by theory. Factors influencing the product development process differ between organizations; however, some common denominators were found in our research. Furthermore, we found that organizations strive to have customer centric products, how organizations view and make their products customer centric varies.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--04/154--SE / NR 2004:154